How to Take Decent Pictures of the Sky at Night
It may sound easy, but taking an epic photo of the night sky in all its glory takes skill. You have to be in the right place with the right equipment, and your camera only needs the right settings. It takes some practice, but the right shot is worth it.
Start with the right hardware
Ideally, you are working with a full frame DSLR or another interchangeable lens camera that allows you to customize its settings. This gives you more flexibility in your camera’s exposure settings so you only get the right shot. Sure, you can shoot the night sky with any old camera, including a smartphone, but there isn’t much you can do with point and shoot. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great aiming and shooting cameras out there, but their sensors are built with a focus on usability over quality.
You will also need an interchangeable lens camera so you can use a wide-angle lens to capture the entire sky. A typical wide-angle lens usually has a focal length of 10 to 25 mm. The above illustration shows how the camera’s angle of view changes depending on the focal length of the lens. Wide-angle lenses are great for star trails and the Milky Way, but if you want a close-up shot of the moon , you need the exact opposite: a telephoto lens. The most worthy photographs of the Moon are obtained with telephoto lenses with a focal length of at least 300 mm .
A tripod is also very important. To photograph a dark sky, you need to set up your camera to capture as much light as possible. Even slight movement can ruin your photo because the light in the photo moves, making it blurry. The tripod provides stability to the camera, so this does not happen.
For the same reason, you can use a timer . The timer connects to your camera remotely, so you can mount it on a tripod and take pictures without touching the camera. This way, you prevent the camera from moving during the process, which could ruin your shot. Personally, I just use the built-in timer on my camera and it works really well. I set it up for ten seconds, press the shutter button, then go away and wait.
Find the best environment
Three environmental factors can affect photo quality: light pollution, weather and sky conditions.
It will be difficult for you to get good pictures if you have to deal with light pollution. Your first job is to get out of town. If you live in one of them, photographer Ron Riesman recommends driving 60-90 minutes . However, this is a general rule of thumb. You can get a more accurate picture of light pollution with the Dark Sky Finder . It shows you where light pollution is most severe. You can take some pretty good photos in the green area, but the further you get from the colorful areas, the better your shots.
When it comes to weather, getting the clearest pictures of the sky requires as little cloud cover as possible. For example, if you want to capture the Milky Way, you shouldn’t have more than 50% cloud cover, says photographer Dave Morrow.
And then there are sky conditions . This is basically how the sky is suitable for photographing it. Risman puts it this way :
For example, as I write this article, on Saturday, March 29, 2014 12:19 pm. If my goal was to capture the Milky Way, I would be out of luck before 2:00 am, as that’s when the brightest part of the Milky Way begins to rise in the east. As spring and summer come, this time will come earlier and earlier.
You will also want to make sure that the moon has either set or is not rising until you finish shooting the sky. Most avid night sky photographers will wait for the days just before, during and after the new moon.
The brightness of the moon can overexpose the Milky Way or the stars you are trying to capture. You can check the moonrise and moonset times at TimeandDate.com . The site also tells you the percentage of the moon illuminated. Of course, if you’re trying to photograph the moon, that’s a different story (you should head straight for moonrise when the moon looks largest on the horizon).
Apps like SkyView (free for iOS and Android ) are also useful for determining the state of the sky. They use your phone’s GPS to show you what you’re looking at in the sky above them. This can help you determine the exact location of the object you are trying to capture, as well as the position of the moon if it is not in your field of view.
All you have to do is point your phone to the sky. So if it’s a little cloudy or you just don’t have the best view, you will at least know where to point the camera to get the stars or objects you want. This is useful for detecting sky conditions, but it can also come in handy if you just want to know what you are looking at.
Choose the correct camera settings
If your camera allows you to shoot RAW images instead of JPEGs. Instead of compressing and optimizing the image like JPEG does when your camera is in RAW mode, it preserves all the detail, color and brightness of your original photo. This means your file will be much larger, but you will also have more editing options.
Autofocus does not work at night, so make sure your camera is set to manual. If your lens is manual focus, look through the viewfinder, find a star in the sky, and focus as best you can. Some photographers say that you just need to focus at infinity. You will see a small infinity symbol on your lens, and you simply rotate it until your focus line aligns with this symbol, as in the photo above. Sometimes, however, infinity doesn’t give the best shot, so you can play with your focus and see what works best for you.
And then there’s the excerpt, the tweak that will probably require the most tweaking. You want to make sure your camera has the correct exposure to get the best possible shot. Exposure depends on three settings: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO . Here’s a rundown of each:
- Aperture : How wide your lens opens to let light through. Measured in apertures.
- Exposure : Your camera’s shutter speed determines how long your camera’s sensor will be open to let light through. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less light it lets through.
- ISO sensitivity: How sensitive your camera’s sensor is to incident light. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive it will be to light.
Your settings will vary based on cloud cover, nearby light, moon brightness, and more. However, there are a few guidelines you can start with. Here’s what the School of Digital Photography recommends for general photographs of the night sky:
- Aperture : f / 2.8
- Exposure time: 25 seconds
- ISO : 1600
With a 25 second exposure, your camera shutter remains open for, you guessed it, 25 seconds. This allows enough light to penetrate so that you can actually see the stars in the photo. If you want to shoot star trails, you need to keep the shutter open even longer to capture the movement.
Your settings will also differ depending on what you are shooting. For brighter objects in the sky, such as the northern lights, Petapixel recommends using an aperture of f / 2.8 to f / 5.6, a shutter speed of 15 to 30 seconds, and an ISO of 800 to 3200. too bright, try lowering your shutter speed or ISO. If it’s too dark, do the opposite: try increasing your shutter speed or ISO.
Remember Looney Rule 11
Again, the Moon is a different story. Your exposure settings will be completely different. You will need a much larger aperture and faster shutter speed because the moon is bright enough – you don’t need to shine brighter on it.
The Looney 11 Rule is a good rule of thumb for moon photography. The rule requires an aperture of f / 11, but this also depends on the phase of the moon:
- Full moon: shutter speed 1/125, aperture f / 11 and ISO 250
- Quarter Moon: Shutter speed 1/60, aperture f / 11 and ISO 250
- Thin Crescent: Shutter speed 1/15, aperture f / 2.8 and ISO 250
Again, your actual settings may differ, but this is a good starting point. From there, you can adjust accordingly.
Create star trails by stacking images
We’ve all seen these beautiful photographs of star trails over time. They are not easy to recreate, but with enough time and some editing skills, you can do it.
The video above shows how it’s done, but here are the basics. The photographs are edited and put together from a series of photographs taken over a long period of time – hours. You set the camera to a continuous shutter speed, which means it takes a picture every 20 or 30 seconds. You will need a remote control to ensure that the shutter remains pressed in order to take intermittent photos for some time. So the stars really do move, so when you put the photos together, you get footprints.
If you know Photoshop, you can put your images in there , but StarStaX is a free program for Mac, Windows, and Linux that makes this technique a little easier. Take a series of photos with your phone and then combine them together using the program to make them look like one, detailed and clear shot.
The basics of night sky photography are pretty simple: make sure your environment is perfect, and make sure your camera is properly exposed. It’s simple, but not necessarily easy, even if the professionals make it look the way it is. However, with some practice and fine tuning, you can still take some pretty impressive shots.